Part 7

Perhaps the frequent remark about “their place” means that they ought not to be educated. Now and then we see what might have been a good barber spoiled by the attempt to make him a minister, and a hasty generalization leads many to say: “_They_, instead of _he_, ought not to be educated.” Allowing for this folly, this talk about “their place” raises several questions. Who determines and assigns the place for six millions of American citizens? Who will keep them in their assigned places? Are our Declaration of Independence and Constitution “glittering generalities?” Are the life and teachings of Christ a vain thing? Pres. Woolsey thanked God for the war to rid us of slavery before it had so sapped the virtue of the whole people that we should not be worth saving. Surely He sent it none too soon. How few are color-blind; how many are color-blinded!

Higher education is needed because time is required for the mental, and especially the moral, development and furnishing of pupils, who neither inherit nor receive from home and church such furnishing. It is needed to continue the work to which it has already contributed so much, of the adjustment of the former owner and property to their new relations of brother and man, of fellow-citizens. The owner could not see the citizen till the man was developed. He needs higher education that he may take some part, other than with pick and shovel in, and may have his share of, the rich benefits of the development of the vast resources of the South. Again, it is often asked, “Would it not be well for the negro to keep out of politics?” Would it not be well for Niagara to run up-hill? He has the ballot, and the duty presses not simply to fit him to read it, but to furnish leaders who will teach him the sacredness of that ballot; who will teach him that the interests of labor and capital are one; the duty of debt paying, personal, state and national; the sacredness of law and the duty to obey it; that the United States is a nation and not a confederacy. The law and medicine should be open to him. The need of thoroughly educated physicians for these people can hardly be overestimated, and is second only, if indeed it be second, to the need of ministers. Higher education should be open to him, that here, if nowhere else, he may feel that he is like other people; that there may be one door that is not forever shut in his face with the words, “This is for white folks.”

Finally, an educated ministry is needed. Pres. Gillman says: “There is no greater curse to a community than an ignorant ministry.” Dr. Haygood, in “Our Brother in Black,” says: “The hope of their race in this country is largely in its pulpit. How urgent the need, how sacred the duty, of preparing those whom God has called to preach to this people!” The few ministers who have received partial training, and others who are making heroic efforts at self-culture that they may aid their people, are worthy of all praise; but their number is pitifully small, serving by their light to make the surrounding darkness visible and to show the need of the best training. This is needed to remove the mass of crude notions and superstitions that almost hide the truth. It is often harder to bring a benighted Christian than a heathen to the light. It is needed to remove the bitter sectarianism which usurps the place of the Gospel. This feeding upon ignorance can only be removed by those whose minds and hearts, broadened by generous culture, hold the great common truths of Christianity superior to the petty differences of sects. It is needed to ward off skepticism, which is to be feared from two sources: the memory of the injuries of centuries, and the continued experience of many evils, even at the hands of professed Christians; and, second, the revelation, as they grow in knowledge, of the emptiness of what is preached as religion and the ignorance and ofttimes wickedness of their ministers leading them to loss of respect, to ridicule and to unbelief. There is abundant testimony to the growth of these evils.

What machinery is needed? In the towns, the three months’ free school should be so supplemented as to continue nine months. In the larger towns and cities there should be high and preparatory schools, with normal classes. At convenient points should be boarding schools, with preparatory, normal and industrial instruction. Then, supported and fed by, and inspiring all below, should be the college, the school of higher education. Justice to a race long oppressed, obligation to meet more than half way those states that make generous appropriations to this end, and safety to the nation, demand that these should be liberally furnished with such buildings and grounds as health and comfort require, with libraries and apparatus equal to the best, and an efficient corps of teachers, so paid that their best energies may be given to instruction.

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CHURCH WORK.

Your Committee on that part of the General Survey referring to Church work, report that they consider it most encouraging and inspiring. Seventy-eight churches formed; 5,472 members admitted; 8,130 scholars in Sabbath-schools! But the great question is, have we a spirit of power and development in all these organizations? for if they are dead they are worthless. Significant facts give us the answer. Five churches were added the past year; five hundred and eleven members were added to the churches; one thousand eight hundred scholars to the Sabbath-school; seven church buildings erected, or in the process of erection—one the gift of Mr. Gregory (upon whom be peace)—two parsonages and two President’s houses. One-third of these churches have had revivals indicating future enlargement. There are seven State Conferences; Woman’s Home Missionary Societies in active work; Sabbath-school Conventions; female missionaries sent forth into the houses of the poor, eleven commissioned the past year, and a revolutionized public sentiment set in so that Southern governors, generals, editors, have generously recognized the value of the work.

Now it has sometimes been questioned whether a Congregational organization, working on thoroughly Congregational principles, could so well plant the Christian church among an ignorant, degraded people, needing guidance, oversight, care, government. But how did the primitive churches in apostolic days succeed? They were all Congregational, and for the most part composed of ignorant people. Did they have apostles to guide them? So have we. Dr. Strieby and his associates and helpers are successors to the apostles in this work. They have the oversight, and the churches have freedom of expansion and growth.

What is the path, let us inquire, through which a feeble church or churches may safely become strong? It is, it must be, through self-government, self-development and self-support. As to the first, churches composed of illiterate Freedmen are, doubtless, unfit to govern themselves. But how shall they ever become fit? How shall they learn, except by trial, failure and correction under kind but faithful leadership? We have given our colored citizens the largest civil and political freedom, with no guidance but that of unscrupulous politicians. Shall we now say that they cannot be trusted in the church?—that they can be free citizens in the republic, with all the duties, trusts and responsibilities of citizenship, but that they cannot be Freedmen in the republic of God? Our church organization is in perfect harmony with the genius of our Government, and is the best possible school of good citizenship. It teaches liberty, regulated by law and love.

But the second essential principle of Congregationalism, self-development, is no less eminent. This necessitates organization and co-operation. Each church cultivates its own field, but its field expands into all the world. It looks over into the Dark Continent, and sends forth some of its young men and women to win, perchance, the martyr’s crown. Every such effort is development, strength. It brings in health and power. The working church alone grows and thrives. This is the nature of the Congregational church. Without this element of self-development into active Christian graces, the church, of whatever material formed, will remain in the weak and callow state of permanent and persistent chickenhood, and in cold nights it must be wrapped in cotton wool to keep it from dying. Now these churches of our Association have gone vigorously to work. They have done well. The facts enumerated in the Report, and to which we have briefly referred, prove this. Let us cheer them and urge them on to greater effort. The whole race will rise just so far as it shall put forth what strength it has.

The third great requisite of the Congregational church is self-support. From the way in which missionary churches come into existence, this is apt to be the most difficult principle to apply. They are weak at the beginning and must be aided. Their real wants are pressing—a pastor, church building, school-house, school. But all these are so precious to them, to their children and their posterity, that great exertion and self-denial on their part should be called forth. No one should be admitted to church membership who will not do something for these great objects. It is safe to follow the teachings of Paul to the poor Corinthians.

Let it be well understood that church membership in a Congregational church means the true Christian manhood of self-support. Let them be taught systematic giving. This will consecrate all duties and all true enterprise. This will bind the church and the pastor together, and will help them to have the spirit of Him who pronounced it more blessed to give than to receive. This will purify the church. Give alms of such things as ye have, and behold all things shall be clean unto you. As in the foreign field, so in the home, with all due safeguards, let us raise the banner, self-government, self-development, self-support. This is true Congregationalism and true Christianity.—_Cyrus Hamlin, Chairman._

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ADDRESS OF PRES. CYRUS HAMLIN.

In the few remarks, Mr. Chairman, which I have to make on this most important subject, I shall draw chiefly from my missionary experience of thirty-five years in the Turkish empire, with those feeble churches formed among a people oppressed, persecuted, despised and ignorant, and yet churches that have come up in many cases from great weakness and great doubt into noble strength and manhood. This may be received as a general fact of the result of church organization. Gather from these poor materials churches enough to be trusted to their own self-government and care: organize the church; give to that church a native pastor, and place upon it all the responsibilities of Christian growth and Christian work. You give it, of course, the Bible, and “the entrance of His word giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” With the Bible always comes, and must come, the common school; and from the common school the high school; and from the high school the college; and from the college the professional school; and thus you have that necessary provision for preparing the native pastorate, and every church must have its pastor from its own race. I believe, in the entire field of the American Board, among all nations and races, there never has been a single instance of real success and growth of a church except under its native pastor, a pastor of its own race. And so you have in this Association the most sacred and solemn duty—duty to the church of Christ, duty to the great Head of the church, to educate for these churches competent pastors; and just so far as this great duty is neglected, our whole work will grow weak and be a failure.

I do not think it is possible to emphasize too strongly the necessity of having an educated pastorate from the people of the churches to which the pastors themselves belong—of the same race. The church and the college go together; you cannot separate them. Separate them, and they will both perish; unite them, and they will both succeed; for wherever you introduce a true evangelic work, there will be a demand for the very highest education. What a tremendous and almost tragic demonstration of this was the grand effort of the great Secretary of the American Board, to confine missionary churches to education in their own tongue—to lay aside all science, to lay aside all study of languages, and to confine education to the vernacular of each people! If anybody on this earth could, by any possibility, have carried that demonstration to successful result, it would have been our revered and beloved Dr. Anderson; but the failure was absolute and terrible. I do not believe there is a missionary now under the American Board, or under any other Board, that will contend for a thus limited education, a vernacular education, as sufficient for the pastorate or the ministry of any people, and especially of an ignorant and degraded people, where the elevating and educating force must come so largely from the pastor himself.

Now in these churches in the East, by necessity, the first pastors were not thus educated. The missionaries were compelled to get themselves such pastors as they could find, just as the apostles ordained elders in every place. They had to ordain just such elders as they could find, and the missionaries did the same. But these pastors have all been growing men; they have all been put into a way of study; they have all been kept under exciting influences; and pastors and churches have gone on together. And I think, from my personal knowledge of the pastors of those churches in the Turkish empire, that they are a noble, faithful and progressive company of laborers in the vineyard of our Lord. It must also be remembered that, in forming these churches and bringing them forward, they will commit great errors; there will be great immoralities breaking out among these church members. I have known such sins committed by church members in whom I had had confidence, that I would at the first impulse have immediately expelled them from the churches, and denied to them all possibility of knowing or having known anything of a true and pure Christianity; and yet those same men, when faithfully and patiently dealt with, have come to repentance, have returned to faithful Christian life in the church, and I have been at the bedside of some of them when they died in faith and joy, and in hope of a glorious and blessed immortality.

Now, I have great confidence in these churches which this Association has formed; I have great confidence in their progress, in their purification, in the elevation and competency and energy of the native pastorate; and it seems to me that this is the very centre, the fountain source, of the safe and onward progress of your great work.

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AFRICA.

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REPORT ON FOREIGN WORK.

Your Committee, to whom is referred that portion of the Executive Committee’s Report relating to the Foreign work of the Association, beg leave to report as follows:

The experience of the past and Providential indications of the future seem clearly to call upon this Association to concentrate their foreign work upon two fields—the Mendi mission on the West coast, and the proposed Arthington mission in East Central Africa, in the region of the Sobat River.

The experience of the Mendi mission has been a sad history of the sacrifice of many lives, and of meagre results when measured by that sacrifice, in any narrow view of the past or present. But when we stretch our gaze into the future, and think of the “must needs be,” which is the law of suffering that accomplishes great results, and lays the foundations of many generations, the Mendi mission already justifies its past. It is the key of a future that seems full of promise. It opens the door to a wider and more salubrious region, reaching back from the malarious coast towards the highlands of the head waters of the Niger, and inviting the extension of mission outposts with better conditions of success. Meanwhile, Good Hope station, on Sherbro island, is favorably situated as a base of supplies and easy communication with Sierra Leone and the civilized world.

The past experience of the Mendi mission has taught some valuable lessons. 1. That the white missionary cannot be depended on for permanent work, by reason of the deadly climate. 2. That the pure black, of good constitution, although born in America, can endure the climate, and is to be the future African missionary. 3. That a competent superintendence is desirable for this African work. 4. That extreme and deliberate care is demanded in the selection of missionaries to Africa, in respect both to physical health and thorough character. 5. That when such selections have been made, our missionaries should be better equipped and provided for than they have been in the past, for efficient and progressive work. A false economy has involved too much loss. The supporters of the Association have only need of intelligent and exact information to see and remedy this defect. A mission steamer for the Mendi work is greatly needed to save time, health, labor, and in the end, money. So are other industrial equipments that might be named, fairly essential to the highest and speediest spiritual results. Your Committee recommend that the Mendi mission be put in good repair, that, any dropped stitches be taken up, that the things which remain be strengthened, particularly in respect to its sanitary and industrial basis, and better conditions for pushing its stations further into the interior.

As to the Arthington mission, in its connection with the other generous and thoughtful projects of this enthusiastic friend of Africa, and in connection also with other Christian missions, and particularly that of the United Presbyterians on the Lower Nile, already dotting that Eastern coast, we approve of the measures under progress by Superintendent Rev. Henry M. Ladd and Dr. E. E. Snow for exploring the Sobat region, and getting all possible light on a desirable location and all other matters involved in a wise prosecution of the work proposed. Should it prove feasible, we advise, as in the case of the Mendi mission, a generous equipment, the providing of a good physical basis, particularly in the procurement of a steamer of light draft, adapted to such rivers as the Sobat and the Jub.

Also at no distant day, the establishment somewhere on African soil, in a salubrious quarter and with favorable contacts with civilization, of an educational institution for young native Africans, combining the best features of the Lovedale School in South Africa, and the Hampton School in Virginia. We believe that such a school will be essential to the best development of our future work in Africa, not only for the training of native missionaries, but for the fundamental lessons of industry and self-help that should be woven from the start into a Christian civilization.

It would also prove a stimulus and an outlet for the various gifts of our educated Freedmen in this country, and furnish a wise direction to their growing enthusiasm for that African work sooner or later to demand them, when princes shall come out of Egypt, and “Ethiopia,” as Dr. Edward Blyden renders it, “shall _suddenly_ stretch out her hands unto God.”

It is also incumbent upon this Association, as the peculiar helper of these Freedmen, to bend its utmost and untiring efforts to develop in them that prime, indispensable, and, by reason of their past limitations, sadly deficient prerequisite for missionary success—a thorough character—builded on the only sure foundations—that “fear of the Lord” which is “the beginning of wisdom,” and the love which fulfills His law.

As it appears that the foothold of future success for the Arthington mission will largely depend upon the good-will of the Egyptian Government, it is evident that vigilant care should be taken in all possible ways to secure that good-will, and the alliance of all moral and diplomatic aids from our own and European governments which are interested in projects like that of the “International Association” for the civilization of Africa.

In making the above suggestions we would not be understood to reflect upon the Executive Committee as lacking proper care or enterprise in the pursuance of the African work. We are aware of their past limitations, the sudden exigencies of the civil war, the vast responsibilities thrown upon them by the emancipation of the slaves, and that the immediate sympathies of the Christian public on which the Association relies for its support have demanded prime attention to the home work; but now that the logic of events more clearly defines the important relations of the home work to the foreign, the appeal should be strongly made for such an increase of contributions as shall warrant the Association to push its work abroad with fresh vigor.

J. W. HARDING, _Chairman_.

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ADDRESS OF REV. J. W. HARDING.

The romance of African exploration is rapidly passing by. We must, in this missionary work, take into account fully the great and peculiar difficulties in the way—difficulties beginning with the physical geography of that continent, its lack of bays and harbors, its generally unnavigable rivers, choked by sand-bars, impeded by rapids and cataracts and masses of floating soil; and then the deadly climate, the rank and putrescent vegetation, the fetid odors poisoning the air. Will you plunge with me for a few minutes into the African forest, starting with the latest travelers, Keith Johnston, son of the great geographer, and Joseph Thompson, a young man of twenty, a graduate of Edinburgh University and a good botanist and geologist? They plunge into that African forest opposite Zanzibar, following a path only eighteen inches wide, for all means of conveyance by beasts of burden—horses, mules, camels, elephants—have failed in that country, and travelers are forced back upon the narrow foot-paths. The grass, cane-like, interwoven with thorny creepers, is from ten to twenty feet high. They have to cut their way with hatchets and cutlasses, it is so soon choked by the rank growth. They are drenched with the dew for the first two hours through and through; then they are scorched by the sun. By and by comes a pouring shower and they are drenched again. At night they lie down in their little shelter tents, breathing the steamy, stuffy, poisoned air; and before they get 200 miles, Joseph Thompson, the young man of twenty, buries under a mangrove tree his friend Keith Johnston. He was only thirty-four, an athletic fellow, proud of his English training, of a splendid constitution. But that is a deadly climate. Young Thompson staggers along, often falling in his tracks. His men have to lift him up and he has to hold on to their belts; but, after fourteen months and fifteen hundred miles of travel, only losing one man, no plundering, no desertions, not a shot fired offensive or defensive, not a drop of blood shed, though under the most intense provocations, he brings all his men back to Zanzibar—a hearty, merry, jovial set.